Mercury Transit

[Kal (Andrew)]

1st post

Pretty shoddy picture but sneaking in with the first transit picture posting so I'm hoping you will excuse it!

Clouds in Sydney this morning but some blue sky offered hope so I set up my etx-90 and waited. Between frustrating breaks between the clouds that only seemed to last a few seconds, I got a clear break for about 20 mins so I snapped some images on my LPI before heading off to work. I think I had my gain/offset set too high (max on both) but I needed to snap very short exposures (between .004 and .008 /sec) because the sun was moving all about on my screen.

Stacked in registax, contrast adjust in microsoft image viewer

Not sure of why mercury looks like a 3/4 pie

http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/1271/mercury2om2.png

[iceman (Mike)]

Hi Kal

to the forum!

Sorry to put a dampener on being the first, but the transit is actually on Thursday morning, not today.

You've got a nice picture of Sunspot group 921/922 though, well done!

[RB (Andrew)]

Kal the transit is on Thursday 9th Nov.
You've captured a very nice sunspot group.


Welcome to the forum btw.

[netwolf]

Welcome Kal , so after all that glad to see you finally saw sense and signed up. The transit is on Thursday morning. I hope you will convince our other friend to join up now.

Regards

[Kal (Andrew)]

lmao! No wonder why I couldn't get mercury to focus into a tight black circle!!!

*cough* was just doing a trial run for Thursday *cough*

Maybe an admin can rename the topic to "sunspots" for me

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

How does "Sunspot Activity Mistaken for Merury Transit" sound

Kal, nice image to start with though.

[RB (Andrew)]

Kal just start a new thread on Thursday called -
"A perfectly round sunspot transits the sun in record time....."

[Kal (Andrew)]

Hahaha yes I will have to do that!

My story so far this morning:

Originally Posted by Rocket Boy

Kal just start a new thread on Thursday called -
"A perfectly round sunspot transits the sun in record time....."

[[1ponders] (Paul)]

[Lee]

Welcome Kal..... were you wondering why Mercury was breaking up into bits? It is a good pic!

[ving (David)]

nice "trial run" kal

well if thats your standard you should be producing a decent shot come thursday!

[Suzy_A]

Hi Kal,

At least I knew something was wrong almost straight away!

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/s...ad.php?t=14767

My photos of the sunspots aren't as good however!

Susan

[Kal (Andrew)]

Hi Susan,

With a guy at my work who is also into astronomy (the 'other friend' that Fahim mentions earlier in this thread) that makes 3 premature observers that I know of. Funny think was this other friend of mine kept calling my mobile saying "I can't see mercury?!" and I kept telling him to persist since I had already snapped my photos

[netwolf]

Kal,
Well i have not finished my cell and it seems we are clouded in so no point now. I know i will kick myself tomorrow when the clouds part for the perfect view. I will be returning that Solar film to you guys unused. Possibly get some time early next year when i come back from holidays to make it.

Regards.